


well, you have to start somewhere

by coldhope



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, Conversations, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Rogue One
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-26
Updated: 2016-12-26
Packaged: 2018-09-12 12:02:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9070786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coldhope/pseuds/coldhope
Summary: Set during Catalyst and directly referencing some of the conversations in the book. Krennic, pushing himself past the edge of exhaustion and determined not to let Tarkin snatch away his project, cannot sleep; Galen Erso comes to find him. Oneshot, mostly exploring Krennic's somewhat conflicting motivations and an old and complicated friendship.





	

_Have you achieved what you set out to do?_

The question came to him more and more often in the small hours of the night when Krennic’s inability to sleep with any regularity reasserted itself. Galen, looking at him the way he had always looked at him, that slight head-tilt and the hooded eyes upsettingly _aware_ , upsettingly clear and focused in a galaxy drowning in imprecision. _Have you achieved what you set out to do?_

He had shrugged a little, silhouetted by the light from his fake project holos, in his pretend office, layers of secrecy within one another like orbital electron shells. _More or less_. 

Galen, still watching him: _You’ve never wanted a family?_

 _Seriously, Galen, can you imagine me a father?_ Krennic had said, bone-dry, the ever-so-slight hint of a lisp providing the auditory equivalent of a derisive eyebrow. 

_You’d be quite the taskmaster, I’m sure. But serving the Republic and now the Empire has been enough for you?_

Krennic had paced away from him, looking at the blue glow of cover stories rather than meeting Erso’s eyes. _How does an individual know what he or she is meant to do? I remember those conversations as well. But we grow up with dreams that sometimes aren’t realized, so we explore different paths. If we’re lucky we find something we’re good at, and that gives us hope and purpose._ He had turned back to Galen. _I wasn’t born brilliant or especially talented,_ he added. _But I’m capable and I’m driven, and that’s brought me to where I am. I stumbled onto something I’m good at, so I’m fulfilled in that sense. But I’m up against some serious challenges_. 

He had always been good at the art of understatement. 

Now, in the slow hours between full dark and the dawn of the Central District’s programmed day cycle, Krennic stood in his office in the Imperial Energy Division headquarters and stared out at the ceaseless movement of aircars: points of light in dimness, the business of business, Coruscant’s inability to sleep mirroring his own. 

There was a kind of fatigue that went beyond simple tiredness, the hours he was forced to keep shading into the hours he forced himself to keep, and then into the vague and edgeless territory of _wondering how long he could actually go_ before anybody noticed. Krennic had too much to do, and it was getting exponentially worse the more interest Wilhuff Tarkin took in the minutiae of his vast and vital project. 

It would have been easier if he had not personally believed in the importance of the project itself: in the need, the sure and certain need, for a solution to the galaxy’s problems beyond Star Destroyers and armies. Creating a weapon so powerful that it would effectively bring about an enduring peace was a legacy Krennic was willing to fight to achieve, by whatever means were necessary.

He thought of Brentaal, of a much younger version of himself casually bloodying the nose of someone who’d knocked Galen Erso down. Of questions asked and answered, and not answered at all. 

He had shown Erso the remains of Malpaz, and that had finally done the job Krennic needed to have done, and brought Erso over to his side again -- _sides_ , always, and Gods knew the galaxy was full of them, and each one convinced they were right, through war after war -- _will you do it,_ he had said, taking Galen by the arms, _will you do this for all of us? You are what the Empire has been seeking and needs. The entire galaxy will be nourished by your legacy_.

Krennic had known he had him when Galen spoke again: _no one can know_. 

No one could know. And now, no one could know about how difficult it was becoming simply to force himself through the days, when he could not sleep at night: no one could know how nauseated he’d become at the thought of food, or how he could somehow never seem to get warm no matter how many layers he wore, how the headache had become a permanent companion in the darkness behind his eyes. No one, but particularly not Tarkin. 

Krennic was so tired he was dizzy with it, resting his forehead against the pleasant coolness of the window transparisteel. _I will do this_ , he told himself, _I will do this, and the weapon will function, and the battle-station will be completed: I will have done the work I must do, and no longer be relegated to the rank of Commander. The rear-admiral rank badges will be heavy, I know that, but they are a weight I am willing to bear._

“Orson,” said someone, and for a long and terrible moment Krennic was not sure if he had heard the word aloud or if it was simply his own memory coughing up vivid recollection; then he became aware of the prickling sensation at the back of his neck that came with being watched. 

Furious with himself, he turned to find Galen Erso standing in the office doorway, looking at him with a more-than-usually unreadable expression. “How did you get in here?” he demanded, and then passed a hand over his face, squeezing his eyes shut against the headache. Dr. Erso had security clearance. Dr. Erso was allowed to be in this building unescorted, apparently. Why he was here at -- Krennic checked his chrono -- four in the morning was less apparent. 

“Orson,” said Galen again, and came forward, and he was abruptly and terribly reminded once more of Brentaal, of the Futures Program, bright blood and wide dark eyes -- and later, much later, after the rescue and return to the Core, Galen smiling at him in a different office: _I know I’m asking a lot, as it would mean your having to leave the Corps of Engineers, but we’d be embarking on something so unprecedented that I’m certain you’ll never have cause to look back._

 _I’m looking back,_ Krennic thought, pressing his temples, _Gods help me, I am: I need to look the other way._ Aloud he said “What _are_ you doing here?”

He had thought about it, for a brief moment. Thought about a path to an entirely different life. 

“You’re not well,” said Galen, and a nasty physical shock dropped into his stomach, a feeling of being _caught out_. Of being discovered. _If he noticed, who else has noticed too?_

“I’m fine,” he said, hating the defensiveness in his own voice. “If that’s all you came to say, Galen, I’m flattered by the concern but I do have rather a lot of work to do --”

“You’re exhausted.” 

Krennic wasn’t quite sure when Galen had crossed the remaining distance between them, but he was suddenly _right there_ , broader through the shoulders than Krennic himself, the enigmatic planes and angles of his face heightened by rather than hidden behind the neatly-trimmed beard. Partly it was just the surprise that prevented Krennic from protesting when Galen rested a large and gentle hand against his forehead -- one simply did not _do_ things like that, he didn’t have a preprogrammed response handy -- and partly it was the pleasant coolness of that hand. “And you’re running a fever,” Galen added, brows drawing together. “You need to rest, Orson.”

“I’m fine,” he said again, closing his eyes for a moment. “I don’t have time for this.” For a brief instant he wondered what the hell Lyra thought about her husband skipping out in the middle of the night to go and harangue old school-friends about their personal habits, and then he remembered that Lyra Erso was on Alpinn; that he had, in fact, engineered her absence, which would hopefully continue for quite a while longer. 

_I’m slipping_ , he thought, with a kind of angry despair. _I’m slipping, and if he’s seen it, others must, and that means Tarkin knows already --_

“Sit _down_ ,” said Galen, and Krennic did not protest when he gently but firmly propelled him over to the formchair behind the desk: in fact, he sank into the chair and closed his eyes, pressing his hands over them for a moment as if it would make the headache back off a little. “When was the last time you got any sleep, or had a decent meal?” Galen inquired.

“This is _you_ asking _me_ that,” Krennic said, without taking his hands away. “They practically had to trank-dart you to get you out of the lab and into bed when you were working on something intense, I seem to recall.”

“I’m better suited to that kind of work,” said Galen, and when Krennic finally opened his eyes he found that Galen had knelt down beside the chair and was looking up at him with an expression he could not parse at all, despite its odd familiarity. “You, on the other hand, are going to burn yourself out, and someone else will have to take over the project, and I frankly do not trust anyone else at the helm just now, Orson. Not when I’m this close, not when you and I understand each other and the importance of this thing. We need you. _I_ need you.”

Krennic blinked at him. Galen hadn’t said things like that since -- well. Since a long time ago. Before Espinar. Before Lyra. The galaxy had been a simpler place in so very many ways. 

(He’d been amused, when Galen told him he’d fallen in love. Amused, and slightly appalled: the idea of all that intellect being focused not on his work but on some unknown woman bothered Krennic more than he’d been willing to acknowledge. He’d told himself it wouldn’t last. He had been wrong.

 _I sometimes get the impression she thinks I’m a bad influence on you_ , he’d told Galen, not so very long ago at all.

 _That’s not true. She just doesn’t understand our partnership._ )

He remembered drunken nights following the crunch of exam time, stumbling home with Galen Erso’s arm slung over his shoulder, the odd _rightness_ of it, the certainty that everything _was_ going to work out just the way he wanted it to. Remembering that certainty made everything abruptly worse: Krennic was so tired he felt deadly sick with it, the room moving around him in an awful vertiginous swoop. He squeezed his eyes shut, hanging on to the arms of the chair, and a long way away heard Galen say something that would have earned him a hefty dose of detention from their old taskmasters. Cool hands steadied him, easing some of the dizziness, and when they went away again Krennic had to work hard not to protest the removal of that simple comfort. 

There was quite possibly no one else in the entire galaxy he could bear to be seen by, at the moment. Krennic kept his eyes closed for a long while, glad he was already sitting down: he was pretty sure he would have fallen just now had he been standing. 

Galen was still there, just a little way distant, and he wasn’t sure why, or what he was doing; time had gone faintly stretchy around the edges, the way it did sometimes in dreams, and Krennic didn’t know how long it was before Galen’s hand squeezed his shoulder gently. He opened his eyes to find him offering a cup of something, bending over the chair. 

“This office is an improvement over the last one,” Galen said. “At least you have some basic refreshment facilities, although I think this may be the worst cup of tea in the entire ecumenopolis right now.”

Krennic took the cup with shaking hands. It was terrible tea, but Galen had put a lot of sugar in it, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually eaten anything; the sweetness was piercing but pleasant, a kind of heartening warmth spreading through him, a necessary fuel. 

He wanted to ask a lot of questions, and could ask none of them, the most immediate and obvious being _why_. They were -- friends, with complications, Krennic thought, and had never been anything other than friends; distant now, worlds away from the time and space they had spent together in their youth. But the look in Galen’s eyes now was one Krennic had never thought to see pointed at anyone but Lyra, or the child, and here it was aimed squarely at him instead, and he found he did not want to look away. 

“Drink that and then go home and rest,” Galen said. The idea of making his way back to his own apartment right now seemed an insurmountable challenge, and this must have shown in his face, because Galen sighed and added “Or just stay here and rest instead. You have to sleep, Orson. Even you have to sleep. And you should see a medical droid in the morning.”

“It is morning,” he pointed out, still slightly stunned. Galen smiled despite himself, and Krennic remembered with that same exquisite clarity telling him _each of us wants what’s best for you, Lyra and I. In a way we’re competing to make you happy, as old-fashioned as that sounds._ Without meaning to, the memory echoing in his head, he said “Stay?”

Galen’s face changed, becoming unreadable once more for a few terrible moments, and then the smile returned under his own fatigue. “All right,” he said, and settled on the edge of the desk. “I’ll keep watch, if that will make you happier.”

The echo of his own remembered words felt not jarring but oddly comforting to Krennic, and again he thought _have you achieved what you set out to do_ , and this time there was an answer. Not a very good one, but an answer nonetheless. 

_For now._

**Author's Note:**

> The title is, of course, Krennic's response to Galen's "you're confusing peace with terror" line. 
> 
> The relationship between Krennic and Galen fascinates me, and I couldn't help playing around with what Luceno provided in _Catalyst: A Rogue One Novel_. Several of the lines in this are directly quoted from the book, which you should all read, as it is delightful.


End file.
